The Wounding Hours - The Destructive Nature of "Calm"

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there was
A time when it was not.
It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.

-Emily Dickinson

During my fourteenth year, I began to recover from anorexia and returned to high school.  It was then that I discovered the poetry of Emily Dickinson.  Unlike so many poems I had read which required discussion to be understood, I related to them immediately and in her words I felt an instant connection. I would find out later that Emily's mother suffered from severe depression and was very aloof.  In regard to her mother, the poet herself wrote:

"When we were children and she journeyed, she always brought us something. Now, would she bring us but herself, what an only gift."

Upon reading that quote, I suddenly grasped the connection and felt a kinship, more deeply than I wished and, in her verses, I felt acknowledged.

To say that my mother was always aloof or cruel would be a lie.  She had moments that felt like true caring.  They followed the harsh times and when they arrived, I embraced them with everything I had and hoped that they would not end.  But, just as times of cruelty ended, so did moments like these, followed by an odd neutrality, or calm that left me alone with my own thoughts.  For those who have never experienced abuse, this would seem the best reprieve-- a time of freedom from misunderstanding and mistreatment -- a time to breathe and recover.  But for the mind of someone who is abused, whether psychologically or physically, these are the most wounding hours.

All forms of abuse take on the same pattern: tensions building, incident, reconciliation, and calm.  While no two incidents of abuse can be equated, the moments of calm are the same, these are the hours and days that are consumed by self-blame and self-doubt.  While these hours initially start with the question of "why", over the course of time, they get answered with "me".  You wonder what you did to deserve the punishment, you wonder what you should do differently to prevent it from happening again, and you wonder what you did right to get to this calm.  You are the common denominator in the equation and the outcome always comes down to you. There is never a  moment when you blame the abuser. NEVER.  It is a jarring reality that the interior of one's own head is often the most savage environment one can encounter.  But there, in the content of your mind, you construct the walls that confine you.

I spent many of my wounding hours within the confines of my closet.  In that space, I felt secure.  The drape of the clothes touching every side of me in the dark felt like a womb.  Yet, as time went on and I grew older, my thoughts of blame grew darker and my constant wish for death turned womb to makeshift tomb.  By the age of ten I longed to die and had a morbid fascination with my own demise.  While other kids dreamt of Disney World, I contemplated suicide.  The darkness had a grip on me and would not set me free.  There were no longer steps in the cycle, there was only pain.  An infinite loop of pain.

I often wonder when things changed for me.  I wonder when the wounding hours stopped.  Perhaps it did not stop at once, perhaps it was a subtle process initiated by that surge of self worth on that cold January day at Bradley Hospital while I was suffering from Anorexia Nervousa.  Perhaps, as I got older and encountered people who loved me, accepted me, welcomed me, nurtured my self esteem and embraced all that I was, the grip loosened its hold.

Whatever is was and however it occurred, I know now that while I am still not the most confident person you will ever meet, I am not my own worst enemy.  I am kind to myself.  I did not stifle myself with self-blame.  I speak to myself on the inside just as kindly as I speak to myself on the outside.  I know that to do otherwise would welcome the pain.

I now choose to embrace every right thing and every wrong thing about me.  I accept the past and I accept that I cannot change things that have happened nor things that I have done.  I am the best imperfection that I can be, and it that I am content.  And in that, I am loved.




Be kind to yourself.


Let the voice in your head be that which pushes you forward toward better things, not the voice that saddles you with self-doubt.  

You are the only person you will spend the rest of your life with, spend the time wisely.